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ABQ
Q |episode = 13 |image = BB_213_S.jpg |runtime=47 minutes |airdate = May 31, 2009 |writer = Vince Gilligan |director = Adam Bernstein |previous = |next = |season = 2 |synopsis = Skyler and Walt collide in the season finale as her frustration with his secrecy finally comes to a head. Jesse self-destructs after a personal blow, forcing Walt to come to his aid. Donald's grief leads to tragedy. |viewers = 1.50 million }} "ABQ" is the thirteenth episode of the second season of Breaking Bad and the twentieth episode altogether. It is also the season finale. Summary Teaser We return to the flashforward from previous episodes . Workers from the NTSB load the items collected from Walter White's pool (including the singed, one-eyed, pink teddy bear) into the back of a van. We watch as the van pulls out, panning up over Walter's house to reveal the city, with two giant pillars of black smoke rising in the distance and helicopters hovering overhead. Act I At his apartment, Jesse Pinkman frantically tries to revive Jane Margolis, but to no avail, as she's now been dead for a while. Devastated, he calls Walt in a panic, who assures him everything will be okay. Cuddling Holly White in his arms, Walt assures Jesse, "I know who to call." BB_2x13_2.png BB_2x13_3.png BB_2x13_4.png A short time later, Saul's private investigator Mike Ehrmantraut arrives at Jesse's duplex. Mike gathers the drug paraphernalia and Jesse's cash, clearing away all the evidence. Smacking the shell-shocked Jesse, Mike forces him to rehearse the script he is to follow with medical investigators. "I woke up, I found her, that's all I know," Jesse repeats reluctantly. "And do I need to state the obvious? I was not here." Mike reminds him. Back at Walt's, donations from all over the U.S. and Canada are rolling into SaveWalterWhite.com. "And it's all real, actual money," Walter White Jr. says. "Don't you think a little 'thank you' is in order?" Skyler White asks her unenthused husband. Donald Margolis, in his car, calls Jane but gets her voicemail. He leaves a message that she better be ready when he gets there, "and no excuses this time." When he arrives at the duplex, an ambulance is already on scene. He immediately recognises his deepest fear materialised. Act II Once inside, Donald watches wordlessly as the ambulance attendants move Jane into a body bag. In the other room with the medical investigator, Jesse follows his rehearsed script. After answering a few police questions, Donald notices Jane's "Apology Girl" sketch, picks it up and leaves with it, with not even a glance towards a mortified, guilt ridden Jesse. At the DEA office, Hank Schrader hits up his co-workers for donations to Walt's surgery fund, and then talks turn to Combo. Hank finds it peculiar that a "dipshit, wannabe banger" with no street rep was dealing professional-grade meth. Stranger still, Hank continues, the "Blue Sky" has disappeared from New Mexico, but is appearing elsewhere around the Southwest. "Almost as if somebody wised up and stopped shitting where they eat," he theorizes. Heisenberg is still at large, Hank maintains, and most likely still in town. Skyler watches the SaveWalterWhite.com donation counter with Walter Jr. "Come on twenty-eight hundred!" she urges the screen, high-fiving her son when another donation is tallied. Walt, finishing his dinner, says nothing. Walt calls Saul, and their conversation ends with Walt demanding, "Shut up and give me the address." Mike drives Walt to a ramshackle trap house known as "The Shooting Gallery" in a dilapidated neighborhood. Against Mike's recommendation, Walt enters the house and locates a passed-out Jesse. As Walt insists he needs help and lifts him to his feet, Jesse clutches Walt, sobbing. "I killed her," Jesse bawls uncontrollably. "I loved her more than anything!" A saddened Walt is conscience-stricken by Jesse's anguish. Act III Donald, meanwhile, returns to the duplex and enters Jane's apartment. "There's no yellow dress here," he tells someone on the phone, possibly Jane's mother, as he scans Jane's closet. In search of a yellow dress, he finds only dark clothes and must fall back on a blue dress with long sleeves as her burial outfit. In Walter Jr.'s bedroom, the computer keeps 'ka-chinging!' as more donations pour in. An irate Walt asks him to turn down the sound, claiming it's disturbing the baby. Skyler announces that, courtesy of Marie Schrader, the Albuquerque Journal will be interviewing Walter Jr. about his website and donations. At the DEA office, Hank's boss introduces him to three local businessmen who are donating to the department, one of whom is Gustavo Fring, the Los Pollos Hermanos owner that Walt has recently sold meth to. "Terrible," Gus says when Hank describes the region's meth problem. Noticing Walt's photo on Hank's donation jar, Gus asks if Walt is an agent. Hank explains that Walt is his brother-in-law and that he is fighting lung cancer. "That's a rough one," Gus says as he slips a donation in the jar. Walt takes Jesse to Serenity, a high-end rehab center. Sitting in a bathrobe by the pool, Jesse says, "What you said in the desert. I get it now… what you meant. I deserve whatever happens." Marie lines up a TV interview for Walter Jr. On the sofa, flanked by Skyler and a very uncomfortable Walt, the teen extols his dad's virtues. "He always does the right thing," Walter Jr. says. "My dad is my hero." An agonized Walt can barely fight back tears of guilt. In the hospital, a nurse administers a relaxant to prep Walt for surgery. As it takes effect, Skyler asks Walt where his cell phone is so she can hold it for him. "Which one?" he groggily responds. Skyler is crestfallen. Act IV Several weeks after the operation, Skyler and Walt visit Dr. Delcavoli and Dr. Victor Bravenec, who tells Walt, "You've bought yourself some real time here." Skyler asks whether Walt can be more independent now. Dr. Bravenec says that he can. Jane's dad, Donald, returns to work for the first time since Jane's death. "After a certain point, time off doesn't help," Donald tells a co-worker who welcomes him back to work. "I figured I'd rather be here. Focus on work." It is revealed he works as an air traffic controller. In their bedroom with the baby, Skyler tells Walt she's going to Hank and Marie's for the weekend. Then adds, "I want you gone by Monday morning." Walt stares back, speechless. "You're a liar, Walt. Two cell phones after all." BB_2x13_11.png BB_2x13_12.png BB_2x13_17.png "Your 'fugue state,' I had to believe that, didn't I?" Skyler continues. She says that she tracked down Gretchen Schwartz, who denied having an affair but admitted that she and Elliott Schwartz hadn't contributed any money to Walt's treatment. Skyler then called his mother, thinking she might have paid for it, only to learn he'd never visited her. "Lies on top of lies on top of lies," Skyler says. Walt follows Skyler outside to the driveway. "If I tell you the truth, will you stay?" he pleads. "Whatever it is, I'm afraid to know," she replies before driving away. At Albuquerque's Air Route Traffic Control Center, Donald corrects himself after identifying a plane as "Jane Mike Two One" instead of "Juliet Mike Two One" after momentarly being distracted with grief over the similar sounding names. Sweating, Donald keeps talking — trying to correct his error — but his radar screen shows two planes on a collision course, as he continues to lose concentration... BB_2x13_14.png BB_2x13_15.png BB_2x13_16.png As Walt sits ruminating poolside, he's suddenly startled by a massive explosion overhead, and looks up to see smoke and fire in the sky. Two airliners have collided, one of them being Wayfarer 515. Mouth agape, Walt watches debris fall from the air. His gaze follows a pink blur that's rapidly plunging in his direction. It splashes into the pool. It's the half burnt Pink Teddy Bear... The screen transitions to the black & white of the flashforwards depicted throughout the season, as Teddy sinks to the bottom of the pool. Official Photos ep-13-1.jpg ep-13-2.jpg ep-13-3.jpg ep-13-4.jpg ep-13-5.jpg ep-13-6.jpg ep-13-7.jpg ep-13-8.jpg Ep-13-9.jpg Ep-13-10.jpg Trivia *Mike Ehrmantraut makes his first appearance in this episode. The scene was originally written for Saul Goodman, but because Bob Odenkirk was unavailable to film the scene that created a new character as "the cleaner," not knowing how popular the character would eventually become *The three 'black & white - Pink Teddy Bear' cold opens from previous episodes are reprised in sequence at the start of this episode. However the second of these, from "Down", omits the section where we saw a pair of glasses, reminiscent of Walt's, in the evidence pile. *When Hank brings up Walt's donations in the DEA office, Walt's photo is positioned under the "WANTED" sign on the whiteboard, a possible nod to being right under their nose, and his later status as a fugitive. *This final episode of season 2 reveals that the teddy bear was most likely from a young passenger on the plane, with the two bodies also being former airline passengers. *This episode ties in together the titles of the other 3 episodes which also had the cold open of the teddy bear, which, when adjoined, reads : Seven - Thirty-Seven - Down - Over - ABQ, with ABQ being the abbreviation for Albuquerque, and '737' the flight model number of the Boeing that went down. *In the podcast for this episode, Vince Gilligan mentions that the photograph on Jane's bedroom wall is a photo of his favorite poet, not Jane's mother which most people assumed. The woman in the photo is Elizabeth Bishop. **Earlier in the episode Jane's dad reveals that Jane's mother's maiden name was Bishop as well. *Walt's pink sweater parallels with the arrival of the pink teddy bear. *This is the first episode that Walt does not have a mustache, as he has a goatee. This goatee remains until . * When Donald Margolis is picking the clothes for Jane's funeral, he can't find the yellow dress that Jane's mother is talking about, only black ones. However there is a blue one which is picked for the burial. This could be a reference to 'a dark Blue Sky'. ** In Jane's Apartment can be seen a black-and-white picture of a woman hanging on the wall. Viewers might assume it’s a photo of Jane’s mother, but it’s subject is the American poet and painter Elizabeth Bishop. The fact that Jane has a famous artist’s portrait hanging on her wall, but none of her own family, seems to suggest her strained, tempestuous, relationship with them. The choice of Bishop is certainly also helped by the fact that she’s Vince Gilligan’s favorite poet. **Also, while Donald is searching through Jane's closet, it is possible to see, in the top right corner of Jane's painted wall mural, a floating/falling pink teddy bear. As well, the central motif of a 'floating girl' is reminiscent of someone falling through the sky - almost as if Jane might've had a premonition when painting it. It could also symbolize, both, Jane 'floating' whilst in a drugged state & her final fate/death. *In the midst of Skyler's epic unpacking of Walt's house of lies, she mentions that she called Walt's mother. This is the second of only three times that Walt's mother has been mentioned in the series : previously in (2x09), in this episode, and in (4x10) during Walt's speech to Walter Jr. about his only real memory of his father. * When Hank says "Anyone, anyone, Bueller?", this is a reference to the classic comedy film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. * Technical error: the NTSB workers clearing the airplane crash debris are wearing North 5400 full-face respirators, but have no filtration cartridges installed. * Jane's dead body can be very visibly seen breathing when Mike comes in to clean up the scene. Production Credits Starring= Starring * Bryan Cranston as Walter White * Anna Gunn as Skyler White * Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman * Dean Norris as Hank Schrader * Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader * RJ Mitte as Walter White Jr. |-| Guest Starring= Guest Starring *Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut *Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo Fring *Krysten Ritter as Jane Margolis *John de Lancie as Donald Margolis *Steven Michael Quezada as Steven Gomez *Sam McMurray as Dr. Victor Bravenec *Michael Shamus Wiles as ASAC George Merkert |-| Co-Starring= Co-Starring *David House as Dr. Delcavoli *Philip Howell as O.M.I. Attendent *Juliet Lopez as O.M.I. Officer *Kieran Sequoia as Local Correspondent *Richard Williams as Business Community Leader #1 *Daniel Halleck as Business Community Leader #2 *Richard Christie as Stew *Ravenna Fahey as Nurse |-| Uncredited= Uncredited *Jon Reigle as Look out *Tina Borek as Lady in Car *Andrea Good as Laundry Worker Featured Music *'"Unknown Track #4"' by Unknown Artist (Music is heard from Flynn’s headphones as he checks his website for more donations) * "Afterglow" by Steve Gorn (in the sweat lodge at Jesse's rehab center) *'"Life"' by Chocolate Genius Inc. (during Walt's surgery) Memorable Quotes de:ABQ es:ABQ Category:Season 2 episodes Category:Breaking Bad episodes